Day 5-7 Vinales

Day 5 Friday 4^th March   Havana to Vinales – ON THE ROAD

The day starts off as per usual with a good espresso and breakfast at Café Bilongus in Mirimar, if you look around you can still find a café culture anywhere! We say our hasta luego to Nilda our host and make for the bus terminus. Now we say “bus terminus” but it is more like a series of rooms hosting varying degrees of organised chaos! The trip to Vinales is around 3 hours and in itself uneventful. We pass through Pinar Del Rio briefly then a further 25kms to Vinales.

A selection of Casas lining the main street

  

Che bellezza!

No cat swinging in this room

The Vinales Valley is filled with magotes, or great pillars of rock. There are a dozen nature reserves in the province along with 6 national parks. More well known for its tobacco farms, that will be a must see.

Lobster...3 nights in a row!

We are greeted on arrival by our host Sara, who leads us to her Casa, our home for the next 3 nights. We follow through a couple of dusty streets, past a variety of Casa’s in very bright colours and varying states of repair. Bonus, ours is a good one! Now “good one” again is subjective, though this is clean, “belle mattonelle” resembling parquetry on the floor…and bathroom walls. OK, so the room is big enough to swing a cat, and bang it’s head on all 4 walls but we can work with that. Sara organises our papers, a trip to the white sand beach on Saturday and another tour of Vinales Valley for Sunday. This family has it all sorted, the offer their home as a Casa, operate the taxi for tours and operate a Palladar, home based restaurant, offering 3 meals a day. We arrange to have dinner in, lobster with rice, frijoles, salad and fruit for….wait for it….$10CUC each!. I’ll say now, it was pretty good. We then head off to explore the town, half hour done, then parked ourselves at a bar for another refreshing beverage. Vinales town isn’t particularly pretty. It is dusty and generally decrepit, houses and shops open to the street, and “simpler” than Havana. That said it is oozing with tourists mixing it amongst the locals, stray dogs, chickens, 2-stroke and diesel fumes.

DAY 6 – Saturday 5th March        Vinales Valley to Caribbean Waters

I’m not kidding, but is a sleep in asking too much?  The kitchen is awake with the older ladies preparing  the  morning breakfasts. Sara’s mother  is keen to get us fed. With a selection of bread, guava jam, guava paste , guava juice , guava fruit  and pineapple washed down with black coffee she is keen to get our feedback of the nights sleep.  We are at crossroads. Do we really tell her we didn’t sleep a wink because  the aircon was noisy and the rooster cockadoodles all night and the dogs bark nonstop?    Si , moi buen gracias…….it’s only 3 nights!

Cayo Jutias  is our adventure today, 1.5 hrs drive northwest of Vinales for a relaxing day by the beach. Our driver (either husband to Sara or brother – still unsure ) is a little annoyed and grumpy. Breakfast  took too long and tells us  several times we are very late for our journey. It’s like travelling with your dad, the one who gets everyone up at the crack of dawn to beat the traffic. Really I don’t see how horse carts , chickens are going to slow our day.

 

Motion sickness takes Andrew to la la land for the majority of the trip so I take in all the scenery and settle Mr Grumpy with my minimal Spanglish and Italian. The countryside is lush with palms, banana plantations and tobacco. In the distance Mogotes, remains of supporting cave walls once rich red soil eroded leaving these flat top mounds much like great molar teeth projecting skywards from the flat valley. This region is riddled with caves and underground rivers and lakes. I recall one of David Attenborough’s doco’s describing one of his top ten animals of the world which are located here in this cave river system. Rare examples of the Albino fish existing  in isolation for millions of years. 

Our arrival at beautiful  Cayo Jutias beach with fine white sand and warm milky sea leaves us breathless. It’s a wonderful day of soaking up the rays and bathing in the warm waters and resting. Well worth the 65 kms to get here.

Ah, the serenity

Day 7 Sunday 6^th March        Vinales - Salsa , yeah right

We haven’t mentioned anything about Salsa yet right? One of the experience’s I’ve certainly been waiting for on this trip. Well like the cars we think it’s a myth…..yeah right!

Yesterday, we had a glorious day on the beach and in the evening another delicious home cooked lobster dish. It was time to find this Salsa everyone keeps thinking Cuba is about. 

In town, Vinales main square has a club /bar /stage everything resembling a good time hot spot.  Jackpot; cover charge paid $3CUC each and the band is playing traditional Cuban rhythms, drinks are flowing and most importantly the Salsa is happening.  Not locals of course the tourists – Italians, Germans, Spanish and French.  Salsa, disappointing.

So that was last night, but today we are off on another road trip to discover the Vinales region.  Our first stop a tobacco plantation run by 4 brothers. Clearly the brothers have a good gig going. One brother explains the process of the tobacco plant from seed to harvest. We are in awe of the technicality of the plant.  The plants grow to approx.  50 cm before it flowers. The quality of the leaves vary the further up the plant with the best and strongest being the top leaves once the flower is removed. This friends make those expensive Cohiba and Montecristo cigars. Lower leaves are used for the external wrap of the cigar and depending on the strength the filler is either all the top  leaves or a variation of those and lower level leaves once dried in the tobacco thatched houses. 

Tobacco plantation and drying houses

Gina smoking Emmanuel's cigar

Chu wannu buy un cigaro?

Don't light a match in the drying house!

It's organic alright!

The next brother Emmanuel, the showman with better English, Italian, French, German and Spanish he jokes holds our attention for further detail in the process of making a cigar. 90 % of the harvest goes to the government to manufacture and export with 10% left to the plantation farmers. Emmanuel is proud to explain that the 10% the brothers are left with are for their own consumption and private sale.  The difference he explains is they are totally organic, unlike the ones sold to the world where chemicals and nicotine are added. So he lights us up a cigar each whilst he continues to show us how they are rolled using his “bare hands”. No virgin thighs as the myths will have you thinking. It’s simply fascinating.

Continuing our tour we arrive at various caves (Indian Cave) and underground lakes and rivers systems accessible by boat only. Entering the long dark almost claustrophobic rock divides with the occasional drip of water leaves you wondering if that’s bats or just fresh water seepage. Lucky for us it’s the later.  

Entering the Indian Cave

We visit the pre-historic “Dos Hermanos” wall mural, colourful and loud painted on one of the mogotes.  Much to the Cubans dismay it can be seen from the car park something they will need to consider if they intend to make money from this site.

The guys in red....Two Brothers in Vinales (Dos Hermanes)

Vinales Valley and Mogotes from the flying fox

Travelling further, we stop at the Canopy tour.  The Tanti’s thinking this would be a walkway across the valley treetops right?  No even better, it’s a Flying fox 35m above the canopy across 4 lines. Andrew is suddenly like …ahhhh no I’m fine I don’t need to see the canopy. Its green tats fine. Well the 2 thrill seeker guides start laughing. I’m like let’s do this yeah!!! Those that know Andrew well know his fear of heights. Those that know me well are like yep she would do something like that, after all she has skydived, abseiled surely a flying fox is a piece of cake. Strapped up and we are off. A quick lesson, reassurance the line/cable can hold over a tonne and there is always the brake, your gloved hand that will slow you down and then the guide will do the brakes if needed.

What a buzz!!!! 1^st line slow to get you in the mood or increase your fear in Andrew’s case, second is short and fast my kind of speed, the third picturesque to take in the canopy and the last long and fastest, my favourite! The canopy, yeah nice and green as Andrew mentioned, but the flying fox a huge adrenaline rush. In the end, Andrew survived, his legs were like rubber and I wanted to go again.